Lucia Salinas
05/14/2021 11:53 AM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 05/14/2021 11:53 AM
Tenants of Cristina Kirchner, business partners in the hotel sector, prosecuted along with the vice president for money laundering, Cristóbal López and Lázaro Báez now share a benefit granted by the Government:
save their companies from bankruptcy, investigated in federal justice by corruption
. As it had done with López's company, Oil Combustibles, the AFIP gave its go-ahead for the owner of Austral Construcciones - convicted of using his company for laundering operations and apocryphal billing - to avoid the liquidation of the company. You must first meet several requirements.
The process is called
bankruptcy by settlement
, and it is a procedure through which the final liquidation of the assets of a company is avoided, with the payment of an amount of money that is distributed among its creditors, thus ending the bankruptcy.
This mechanism was attended by Cristóbal López, owner of Oil Combustibles and Lázaro Báez, head of Austral Construcciones.
The first benefit that the head of the Austral Group requested was the one promoted by
the law that the opposition called a tailored suit for Cristóbal López:
Báez requested to get into the moratorium and that they give him a quota plan to face
a verified debt with the treasury of 2,800 million pesos.
The latest tax moratorium law grants
a considerable reduction in interest and penalties, in addition to the extensive installment plan
.
The ultimate goal is the rescue of the construction company that is investigated by the Justice in multiple cases.
Now he managed to advance in one more procedure: the settlement.
This procedure avoids the final liquidation of the company.
To obtain it, Lázaro Báez must obtain the agreement of all his creditors and thus, he will be able to lift Austral's bankruptcy, inactive since 2016.
The collection body directed by
Mercedes Marcó del Pont
informed him that his request is progressing and that he seeks the agreement of the rest of his creditors. The main one is the AFIP. Before any progress, however,
the former partner of Cristina Kirchner must pay fees of 3.6 million pesos.
For the maneuvers of that company, Báez was sentenced on the Route of Money K to
twelve years in prison, it was confirmed that he used the construction company to launder 60 million dollars
. The firm externalized and re-entered money of illicit origin into the country, using
offshore
firms
and accounts located in Switzerland as well as in other tax havens. At the head of that organization, according to justice, was the former partner of Cristina Kirchner, and they pointed out that nothing would have been possible without the company that he now wants to save.
In addition, two of the judges of the Oral Federal Court 4 (TOF 4) indicated that Austral Construcciones could be used to launder money because it first
managed to obtain funds from the irregularities committed through the road contracts
, a file for which
Báez is also tried together Cristina in the case of Vialidad.
According to the courts, the company received 51 bids for 46,000 million pesos with surcharges and had the State as its only client.
The construction company is today in the middle of an economic debacle. He accumulated a millionaire debt with the treasury when after 2015 he stopped receiving public funds. With the cessation of payments to a score of creditors, Austral entered the bankruptcy process, which was decreed in June 2018.
The recognized liability is 962,400,463 pesos.
The highest percentage of that credit is a debt with the AFIP that Marcó del Pont now directs. In total,
he owes the collecting body 562,488,839 pesos
. With the bankruptcy underway, Judge
María José Gigy Traynor
advanced in the auction of the assets registered in Austral's name: 52 apartments (in Buenos Aires and Santa Cruz), 2 stores (in the south), 26 garages in the different properties that have functional units, 25 properties identified as buildings, 3 rooms, 12 lots and hundreds of automobiles and machinery.
The next step is to advance in the auction of more assets and thus begin with the final liquidation of the construction company whose only client was the State.
In this instance, the judge distributes the money obtained from the sale of the main assets among the creditors.
But it
is what Lázaro Báez will be able to avoid with the settlement.
During the macrista administration of the AFIP, led by
Leandro Cuccioli
, a judicial claim was also initiated in the framework of the bankruptcy.
According to the agency's resolution, that claim is for 2,880,124,946 pesos.
Two months ago, the current administration, led by Mercedes Marcó del Pont, confirmed that it wanted to collect that debt that the Báez firm maintains with the State.